Butte City
/A shallow basin rich in gold was discovered in 1850, about one and a half miles south of Jackson. Miners flocked to the area and for a very brief time the town known as The Bute, Butte City, and Greaserville rivaled neighboring Jackson in size and importance By 1851, several hundred inhabitants called Butte City home. Numerous buildings once lined the town’s main street, housing the merchants, businessmen and miners during the camp’s brief existence, brief because the gold gave out early and the town was abandoned almost faster than it was built.
The Butte Store is the only structure left from what was once Butte City. Well built to have lasted so long when everything else is gone, this old building was constructed in 1857 from local schist fieldstone with doors and windows framed in fired brick. The post office was housed here for a short time in 1857, and some accounts claim that the structure once housed a bakery run by a man named Xavier Benoist. At one time iron doors and shutters covered all the openings, but vandals made off with those on the lower level. The original owner of the building is not known for sure, but it eventually came into the hands of a man known as Ginnochio, by whose name the building is also known.
